Let low-income communities like the ones in Koja have the freedom to build their own schools, and let poor parents decide what education they want for their children. Then step back and watch children flourish.

Building a hospitality school in an urban environment is one thing, but establishing a presence in an area plagued by a 70-year civil war is another. Developing and encouraging tourism in the Karen State of Burma (now Myanmar) has been a challenge for those hoping to revive the region—and financing options are hard to come by…

“Think about what you wanted at 18 (years old),” said Kenli Schoolland during a presentation at the Foolish Things Salon on Oahu, Hawaii. “Would you take a $200,000 bet that that’s what you wanted to do ten years later? . . . Or for the rest of your life?” asked Kenli. Kenli said that education around the world has changed as government has subsidized higher education. “With these federal loans, people started to take gambles. They started to bet on what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives, with no money down.” Kenli showed that education today is changing — getting worse in the government, but getting much better outside the government. Inside the government system, Kenli said, debt is rising for college graduates. “The average debt is $35,000, though there are many that graduate with much more given that a college degree for four years can be upwards of $200,000.” What are people getting for that money? Many graduates today, said Kenli, are realizing that their degree isn’t worth what they paid for it, as job recruiters seek better qualified candidates with real world skills. However, Kenli said education outside the government sector is improving tremendously, where costs are falling and quality is rising. Online schools are one example where students can go take high quality courses for bargain prices. But another type of education is arising outside of the “school” model, in the form of digital marketing, said Kenli. “I’m sure maybe you’ve all seen an ad that says, ‘Earn $15,000 in passive income from your home!’ . . . so that’s a cheesy glimpse of it, but it’s actually part of a formula,” said Kenli. “People are being taught to market themselves . . . it’s actually creating a huge educational service, and it’s bringing …

Glenn Cripe gave a presentation at the 2016 Bali World Conference on Market Liberalization, hosted by the International Society for Individual Liberty. In the presentation, Glen described the work of the Language of Liberty Institute, co-founded by Andy Eyschen. “We’ve had more than 50 programs in 24 countries,” said Glenn, “In August, we will go to country number 25, which will be Kenya.” The camps cover job creation, entrepreneurship, and liberty, and how the principles of a free society promote a robust economy.

Frances Kendall is the author of Let the People Govern and Super Parents, Super Children; among many other books. Her books have been translated into several languages and went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. She author formed a publishing company named Amagi. Her book The Solution sold 70,000 copies in South Africa before it too went into translation. The worldwide libertarian network helped. “They were excited to see a book standing for everything they believed in doing so well.” Time magazine and The Economist wrote about it. It was translated into Afrikaans. Then Louw and Kendall were nominated by the Norwegians for the Nobel Peace Prize. Frances gave a talk at the 2015 Bali World Conference hosted by the International Society for Individual Liberty on parenting for the liberty minded parent.

“This is not about substance, this is about style,” said Judd Weiss at the International Society for Individual Liberty World Conference on Market Liberalization in Bali. “Let’s say you’ve got a car you want to sell,” said Judd. “Imagine how it would impact the sale if at the same time, if you tried to explicitly convince your buyer that he’s an idiot. Because that’s what we do. That is the sales method of the liberty movement at the moment.” According to Judd Weiss, the liberty movement could learn a lesson from companies that separate their engineers from their marketeers. “We’re basically the engineers dominating the sales department.” Judd continued, “An engineer’s focus is on the product. He eats breathes and sleeps that product. He should not be able to sleep at night if the numbers don’t add up. That’s a good engineer.” “But that high level nit-picky detail that engineers go into has nothing to do with introducing people to these ideas. It has nothing to do with basic sales.” Judd continued to explain that salesmen focus on people. “It’s a very different skill set — almost completely unrelated.” Judd Weiss then talked about the process of marketing from different approaches, but he said ultimately every salesperson has the same job, “Make it as simple as physically possible.” Watch the rest of Judd Weiss’ amazing lecture here:

by Steve Browne Vienna’s medical university has recently announced next year’s entrance exam scores will be weighted towards women. Deputy dean of studies Karin Guiterrez-Lobos said female applicants’ exam results will get an “adjustment factor” bump on the July 6 entry exams. In the Austrian medical university, 56 percent of the applicants are female, but only 43 percent of them pass the exam. I believe there are similar results in American medical schools, though finding exact figures is like pulling teeth. The first thing I thought of after I read this was my old chemistry teacher, Dr. Ascanio Giuseppi DiPippo. The son of working-class Italian immigrants who grew up in an Italian neighborhood speaking Italian at home, he was what you’d call a high-achiever, as were all of his 11 siblings. I think they all grew up to be scientists, teachers, professionals. When I got a ‘B’ on a tough exam and said I thought that was pretty good, he asked me, “So would you want to go to a doctor who’d forgotten 20 percent of what he was supposed to know?” Weighting exams is supposed to insure a more “diverse” student body, work force, etc. In this context diverse is supposed to mean the group demographics will be identical to the population at large. Any deviation from this means some group is suffering from some kind of disadvantage, and you’re a bigot if you suggest otherwise. The fact that individuals differ in their abilities is accepted by everyone, in practice at least. We probably agree on making provisions for access for the disabled for example. But nobody who shares the road with semis pulling singles, duals, or triples wants to abolish the absolute prohibition on issuing Commercial Drivers Licenses to people who’ve lost the sight of one eye, or …

In her second term as president of Chile Michelle Bachelet is set to impose significant educational reforms to further her socialist agenda. An estimated increase of 1.5-2 percent of GDP on top of existing spending is supposed to improve the quality of and access to (higher) education and thereby reduce the problems of inequality and segregation. Bachelet’s plan to provide “free” college education to all Chileans exposes her ignorance of the effect of such policies in other countries. It is a statist’s’ knee-jerk reaction: once we’ve identified a problem naturally all we need to do is throw a bunch of money at it and have the government point guns at people, and the rest will take care of itself! After all, the Danish taxpayer is forced to pay for everyone’s college tuition, and they are prospering! This sort of simplistic stance on education completely ignores historical and empirical evidence that shows that the voluntary system in existence before the dawn of compulsory schooling already met the existing needs for education, or that modern public schooling is a lot more likely to increase social segregation. The latter is confirmed by Chilean figures correlating people’s addresses, incomes and test scores. Besides, we already know that putting more power into the hands of bureaucrats in faraway government buildings, where we can be sure their views and policies will be heavily influenced by special interest groups, will invariably reduce transparency, accountability and quality. In the United States, for instance, this has lead to a ballooning student loan debt that now stands at $1.2 trillion or some $30,000 per student. In three decades tuition fees have risen by 1,120 percent, meaning that the same college degree today costs 12 times as much as in 1978. The total bill ranked up on behalf of the American …

Would you like to be free? Learn English. It is a language that connects the world. Despite the fact that Chinese is still spoken by more people in the world, on an international level English is more useful, since it is not concentrated in the same geographic area and thus it is used as the language of business, science and technology and aviation. Latin used to be the Lingua Franca that crossed over borders. However, it was the language of the select few. Modernity made education available to more people and with English, these people can break free from the confines of their national borders and interact with people from all over the world. What if there was a still better option? Not only to help people learn English, but to take it a step further and teach them about liberty? The good news is that there is such a possibility now! The Hungarian Free Market Foundation’s exciting new project, called Be Free with English teaches the language using pro-liberty, libertarian material. In the process of furthering the English skills of the learners, they are also presented with the idea and practical side of liberty. With the help of material such as I, Pencil, a video of a speech by Milton Friedman and Hayek’s ideas on society the basics of the libertarian idea gradually unfold and in the meantime people will be better and more skillful in the English language. This is done with the help of a software called Lingo, which integrates into the browser and pops up on the sites of the materials asking various questions testing both grammatically and contextually the learners. It goes further than this however. When an unknown word is found in the text, upon clicking on it lingo will explain its meaning and …

Today we are launching a series on “Opting Out” of the system, where we will explore actionable methods of enhancing our individual liberty. To start the series off, we have with us today Doug Casey, the Chairman of Casey Research, who is not only a highly regarded authority in investment, but also in “internationalization”, which he believes is key to protecting oneself, as it keeps one from being dependent on any single government. His latest book Right on the Money, written together with Louis James, one of ISIL’s directors, has come out recently to give readers actionable advice on building and safeguarding their wealth. (Interview conducted on 28 Feb, 2014) Kenli Schoolland [KS]: Hi Doug, it’s great to have you with us. Doug Casey [DC]: Likewise, Kenli, thank you. I guess you’re in London as we speak? KS: Yes, how about yourself? DC: I’m in Punta del Este, Uruguay, which is a fashionable international beach resort in the backward little socialist country of Uruguay. It’s actually quite pleasant. But then I spent a couple of weeks in the Congo between wars and thought that was quite pleasant too. So perhaps I’m not as discriminating as some… KS: Sounds very nice. How do you choose your locations? Is there a trade off between sunshine and socialist governments? DC: Actually it’s hard to find a non-socialist, non-fascist or non-statist/collectivist/ progressive government anywhere in the world today. There’s almost no place you can go to escape them. They cover the face of the earth like a skin disease. And they’re all becoming more virulent and aggressive, which is disturbing. KS: So you might as well take it with sunshine? DC: Governments that are located in tropical areas do tend to be more overtly socialist, they’re mostly undisguised kleptocracies… that’s the bad news. The good news is that they also tend to …